Shilo's Legacy
by The-Darkness-In-The-Bright
Summary: Set a few years after the Opera - used to be a one-shot. Shilo, after being in New York for 5 years, has established herself as a singer and composer and has returned to confront her past...can a certain graverobber help?
1. Shilo Returns

As if hypnotized, my eyes are drawn to the eerie blue light, pulsing in the shop window. Walking home, I decided to take the long way, in spite of the powdery snow now adorning my hair and jacket. My body feels surprisingly warm as I make my way back, never breaking stride in spite of my intent gaze on the blue light. It reminds me of something…something very familiar…but I can't quite put my finger on it. That could be because all ten of them are covered with bright purple gloves, but I digress. My snow-lashed eyes remain on the bright blue glow even as the shop leaves my peripheral vision. The tiny falling flakes only leave traces of their existence on my face. It's as if I can't really feel them…

_I can't feel nothin' at all…_

I blink in surprise. I remember why that blue glow seems so familiar...I shiver, but it's not because of the cold. The memories are coming back…I used to be able to keep busy and push them aside…but they're coming back, faster than I can stop them and more vibrant than when I actually experienced them. Back to when I was a naïve seventeen-year-old child, aware of the horrors of the world, but not truly aware until I had been outside for the first time…

_It's quick, it's clean and it's pure…_

The unadulterated smell and the gut-punching sight of hundreds and hundreds of dead bodies. They had been people once, under the spell of plastic surgery and organ "rentals", as I had called them. Those rentals saved lives, don't get me wrong…but after a while, the disillusionment set in - usually after they realized that they couldn't make the payments on their new organs. They always forgot about the consequence of that little eventuality – repossession. If you couldn't pay in cash, you paid in blood with your life; collected by legal assassins…the idea had disgusted me. It still does…but one fateful night forced me to look at the situation differently.

_It's the 21__st__ Century…Cure…_

When I was seventeen, God and the devil was in the form of one man. He was a cancer that infected everything he touched and then, even his precious Genterns and that damned drug couldn't save him. His daughter had been a junkie for the street version while she had been the poster child for its regulation at GeneCo. In a macabre way, it was amusing.

I tuck my hair, real now rather than a wig, behind my ear and smile wryly as I find myself in his alleyway. Scantily dressed scalpel sluts like the devil's daughter, addicted to the drug and the knife, circle like vultures around one lone figure, making him easy to spot. We exchange knowing smiles as I lean against the wall and he holds up a small tube of glowing electric blue to his "audience", parodying a favorite uncle weaving a fable for eager children.

_Zydrate comes in a little glass vial…_


	2. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother

"Well, well…" the low, amused voice of Graverobber made Shilo repress a shudder. Did he have _any_ idea how sexy his voice was? Then again, looking at his street harem, he probably _did_. "Someone's all grown up," his surprisingly blue eyes seemed to bore into her as he smirked, looking at Shilo up and down.

Gone was the timid seventeen-year-old girl he'd rescued from Rotti's clutches, introduced to Zydrate and "escorted" home. In her place, five years later, stood a young woman, twenty-two. Her face was the same, minus any baby fat and plastic surgery. Her eyes were just as dark as they had always been, with her normal smoky eye make-up. Her lips, once pale and blending in with her still snow-white skin, were dark red. On the scalpel sluts, the color was trashy. On her, it seemed mature. She had grown a little more, but was still quite petite. Her wig had been discarded for her real hair, which had grown after her father's "medicine" wore off. It was dark brown and framed her face to her chin, where it had then been layered, and two sections that framed her face had been dyed purple. Her cameo was now dangling from a black velvet ribbon that served as a choker. Though she was bundled up in a fitted black over-coat and bright purple gloves, her heeled knee-length boots were still the same, and Shilo had on a black mini-skirt with a purple bustier over black lacy, billowy sleeves and lace round-neck blouse underneath.

"You sound like my father would have…did you expect me to stay young forever?" her voice, now wry and confident, made Graverobber's smirk widen. Shilo resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Why did people seem so shocked that she was Shilo Wallace? Apart from growing a few inches and actually having hair, she still looked the same.

"Trust me, Kid, you'll always be young to me," he winked at her before taking credits from a scalpel slut and injecting her with Zydrate. Shilo raised a brow at him.

"Uh-huh…well, apparently, even if I've changed, I seem to be the only one who has. Amber's still running GeneCo and you're still robbing graves,"

"Not much does change around here, Kid," Graverobber gently, but firmly, passed the scalpel slut on to one of her already dizzy friends and they collapsed against the wall together. Shilo folded her arms.

"Amber still comes to you, then?"

"When she has an entire company to give her the drug?" Graverobber looked at her with a raised brow of his own. Shilo smirked now, her own sense of humor now as dry as Graverobber's.

"Not the reason she'd always visit, was it?" she asked slyly, leaning against the wall and looking at him with an impish twinkle in her dark brown eyes. He blinked in surprise before letting out a bark-like laugh.

"Seems like someone's not quite as innocent as I would have thought," he commented, looking slightly impressed. Shilo rolled her eyes.

"I was a shut-in, but that doesn't mean I was stupid,"

"Never said you were, Kid, just innocent," Graverobber chuckled. Even Shilo would admit that she'd grown a backbone ever since that fateful night. "So where've you been, anyways?"

"New York," the answer made Graverobber look at her in slight confusion.

"You went to New York for five years and didn't stay? From what I've heard, it's better than this dump,"

"It was. But I felt like I needed to come back. So, after I graduated-"

"Graduated? A shut-in got into college?" Graverobber interrupted.

"I'd been tutored by my father when I was shut in. He might have been a Repo man, but that didn't mean he was going to keep me stupid. I went to New York, took an equivalency test and passed, so for all intents and purposes, I knew the high school curriculum. So I wrote a few essays, got into NYU and studied music and etymology for five years," Shilo finished and shrugged.

"Etymology…insects?" Graverobber seemed surprised. Shilo didn't blame him – she certainly didn't look the type to collect insects and study them.

"I've collected them for years, but it's just a hobby. Anyways, I should be getting back home," Shilo checked her watch and turned to go.

"You remember where it is?" Graverobber called teasingly, making Shilo turn and raise a choice finger at him in response. His amused laughter followed her out of the alleyway as she fought a smile.

*

A crash made Shilo sit bolt upright in bed. She looked around her room on instinct and, finding nothing out of place, knew the noise must have come from downstairs. Getting up, she bent and picked up the baseball bat she had bought in New York for the same reasons as now. Tiptoeing quietly, and ignoring the icy chill of the floorboards, she opened the door silently and slipped out onto the landing. Soft swearing could be heard as Shilo padded down the stairs slowly. Figuring out that the source of the noise was coming from the closet under the stairs, Shilo figured that whoever it was had come in from her mother's tomb.

"What the fuck are you doing in my house?!" Shilo threw her voice, making it come from the opposite end of the house, before hurrying down the rest of the stairs. She was about to pound the hell out of the intruder before she realized who it was.

"WHAT THE HELL, GRAVEROBBER?!" she shrieked, lowering the bat and settling for slapping him over the head.

"Ow! Easy, Kid!" Graverobber protested, rubbing the back of his head with one hand and rubbing his ear with the other. "I think you've given me a concussion and a burst eardrum all at once,"

"Don't be witty with me at this hour and when you've _broken into my house_!" Shilo hissed, poking him hard in the chest with each of the last four words. Graverobber grabbed her hand and glared down at her warningly.

"Kid, I needed to get away from Amber and her goons. They've been after me for a while," Shilo narrowed her eyes.

"Why? It's not like she needs you for anything,"

"No, but when I'm the only legitimate proof of that bitch being a Zydrate junkie and a scalpel slut…" he left the sentence hanging, not needing to finish. Shilo could certainly see that Rotti's business strategies had been rubbed off on his daughter – eliminating anyone who had the potential to take you down before they had the chance.

"So you came _here_." she stated blankly, raising a brow. She was trying to take her mind off two things: - that Graverobber was still holding her hand and she was wearing an incredibly short white nightgown in front of him. He'd probably seen girls in less, but she was hardly a desperate Zydrate junkie or Amber Sweet. He shrugged.

"I'd hoped to just hide here for a couple of hours without you waking up before heading back out, but…" he gestured at a toppled side-table. Shilo sighed and shook her head in slight exasperation.

"Come on," she took her hand back, feeling it tingle at the loss of contact. She righted the table and beckoned him to follow, carrying the bat with her. She led him up the stairs to the guest bedroom and pointed at it.

"You can stay in there. The bathroom's just over there," she nodded at the next door down. "If you want any food, just help yourself. The kitchen's not too hard to find. Good night," she yawned before turning to make her own way to her warm bed. Graverobber stopped her by grabbing her elbow. She turned and looked at him quizzically.

"Why?" was all he asked. Shilo shrugged. She wasn't exactly sure herself. She figured it must have been the fact that she always had someone with her and being alone felt weird. But she wasn't about to tell him that.

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. If you intend to leave before I wake up, at least leave a note so I don't think Genecops kidnapped you and I'm next. Night," she walked into her room, shut the door and collapsed on her bed.

Unknown to her, Graverobber stared at her bedroom door blankly before shaking his head, muttering, "Strange kid," under his breath and entering the guest bedroom, shutting the door behind him. Soon, all was silent in the Wallace house once more.


End file.
